Saturday, 5 December 2015

Marie Naffah - Caribou / Honne / Florence & The Machine Mash Up

At first the name Marie Naffah didn’t ring any bells at Breaking More Waves, until we were pointed in the direction of a festival review we wrote way back in 2011, which demonstrates that this blog is as much of a musical diary to remind us, when the memory fails, of the past, as it is a projection of the here and now.At the time we wrote “Marie Naffah charmed as the perfect bohemian festival singer-songwriter with a flower garland in her flowing hair, summer dress, acoustic guitar and soulful-folk songs about real life.” Now in 2015 here she is again and once more she’s charmed us, but with something a little different – a mash up of Caribou, Honne and Florence & The Machine. The first thing that strikes us is Marie’s voice. We’ll stick with that soulfulness we described before, but would like to add that it has a solid stirring depth to it; one of those vocals that could probably take on any genre and sound powerful with it. There's a hint of Florence there as well, although maybe that's just because part of it is a Flo tune? Then there’s the mash up itself – not your typical electronic producer mash up with glitchy samples and warped beats, but instead just Marie’s voice and a guitar, making three songs sit naturally together as one. Consider us impressed.It seems that whilst she’s been off the Breaking More Waves radar Marie has been grabbing a few other people’s attention, having won MTV Brand New Unsigned and joined the likes of Sam Smith and Ella Eyre on MTV’s 2014 Brand New shortlist. She’s also written and recorded a song called Blindfolded which she wrote in response to a conversation with her grandmother about her grandmother losing her site, and then recorded it with six blind and visually-impaired musicians, some of whom had never played in a group before. But for now enjoy her take on Caribou, Honne and Florence. You can download the track for free from Soundcloud below.Marie Naffah - Caribou / Honne / Florence & The Machine Mash Up